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Most people will be familiar with the Lord of the Rings film trilogy [ii]. They may even know that the films grossed US$3.1 bn at the box office. But what they probably don't know is how videoconferencing helped in the films' production.

A satellite-linked videoconferencing network allowed director Peter Jackson to manage as many as seven different film crews at the same time, shooting at locations scattered across hundreds of miles across both of New Zealand's main islands.

The systems allowed Jackson to see exactly what was being filmed by each crew, check the results and discuss progress with the actors and crews. As a result, he was able to direct all three films in the Rings trilogy at once. It was an impressive achievement. The project cost $270 mn, about $130 mn less than if the three films had been shot separately. You might think this is an exceptional example. Today, perhaps it is. But in the future it's the sort of thing that's going to be commonplace.

Earlier this year, a survey of more than 700 fellows of the IEEE – which claims to be the world's leading professional association for the advancement of technology – took a closer look at video conferencing [iii]. Asked if they felt the technology would become routine, 81 per cent of those interviewed said it was likely. 10.5 per cent reckoned the chances were equal and only seven per cent said it was unlikely. And when asked when this was likely to happen, 70.7 per cent said within 10 years against 26.1 per cent who estimated the timescale to be 11 to 20 years.

What's more, in October this year, Cisco Systems Inc., provided a glimpse of what the future of conferencing might look like. It has built a high-definition, two-way video conferencing solution that uses three HD screens to display life-sized images of the remote conference participants as though they were sitting around the meeting table. It was described by one analyst as "the only video system I have seen that makes you feel as if you are in the same room with others, even when those people are located across the globe" [iv]. Cisco expects innovations like this to reduce business travel by 20 per cent, saving US$100 million per year.

But what of today? Most of us – with the possible exception of the British privy council – have come a long way since the only practical way to communicate was to hold a face-to-face meeting. The latest audio, web and videoconferencing services can change the way a business works, save time and money and even contribute to a cleaner environment. Julie Woods-Moss, a director of marketing for BT, is one of the increasing number of 'Peter Jacksons' we have in our business. She lives in Amsterdam, works from home regularly and makes extensive use of conferencing services to manage BT's marketing activities across 170 different countries.

Recently, for example, she used video-conferencing to hire a number of people in the US. She says that the technology is now so good that she could see potential recruits sweat when she asked a tricky question – and their eyes light up when they thought they'd scored a home run! More importantly, it was the right tool for the job. Many of the people were considering offers from other employers. Time was of the essence so video-conferencing was the obvious solution.

As well as being a tool for efficiency, conferencing can also offer companies a far greener way of operating. As independent researchers Professor Peter James and Dr. Peter Hopkinson of the University of Bradford and SustainIT found, use of conferencing within BT's business eliminates 338,607 face-to-face meetings a year [v]. This considerably reduces travel and eliminates a minimum 40 kg of travel-related CO2 emissions for every meeting - described by the report's authors as a “very conservative estimate”. Taken together, this means BT's use of conferencing reduces its emissions by at least 54,000 tonnes of CO2 a year.

And in these turbulent times, conferencing is often a safer option. According to the Financial Times: “The word in Ramallah is that the Palestinian territories have more users per capita of video-conferencing than anywhere else in the world. True or not, 'distance collaboration' makes sense in a place where business meetings must vie with impromptu road blockades and frequent air raids” [vi].

And what of work-life balance? Another BT employee, Michael Blackburn, lives in Paris but also has a desk in BT's London head office. He uses broadband and BT's secure internet-access service when he's working from home – an experience he describes as being “exactly like being in the office”. He uses BT Live Meeting – a service that combines audio-conferencing and Microsoft's Live Meeting software – when he needs to work with people on documents.

So how else can conferencing help companies? Quite significantly, according to a McKinsey report [vii], which states that during the past half century, the faster pace of specialisation, globalisation and technical change has led to a dramatic increase in the value and volume of our 'knowledge' interactions. In most developed countries today, such interactions are key to four out of five jobs outside agriculture. The remaining 20 per cent involve extracting raw material or working on a production line. A century ago these proportions were reversed.

The number of jobs that involves handling the most complex type of interaction – McKinsey calls them tacit interactions – is growing faster than any other type of job in developed nations. And the question is: in a world where efficiency and speed are everything, how do you boost the productivity of such 'power' knowledge workers? How, in short, do you give your company competitive edge?

According to McKinsey, it won't work if you force workers of this type to follow uniform procedures. Rather they need to be encouraged towards more productive ways of interacting, innovating and collaborating. Making the right tools – including the full range of conferencing tools – readily available is essential.

As McKinsey says: “Two decades ago, international calls were costly and email was a novelty; today global voice connections are cheap, people around the world send around 30 billion emails a day and entirely new technologies – broadband internet, search capabilities such as Google, mobile phones, PDAs and video conferencing – make it possible for tacit interactions to happen more easily.”

That this really makes a difference is outlined in Frost and Sullivan's June 2006 report “Meetings around the world: the impact of collaboration on business performance” [viii]. The study, which surveyed 946 information technology and line-of-business decision-makers from a cross-section of 2,000 companies across the US, Europe and Asia-Pacific, found that collaboration is the key driver of overall performance of companies around the world. In fact, they showed that it was twice as significant as a company's aggressiveness and five times as significant as the external market environment.

And of the collaboration technologies studied, three were more commonly present in high-performing companies than those with low performance – web conferencing, audio conferencing and meeting scheduler technologies.

“This study reveals a powerful new metric business leaders can use to more successfully manage their companies and achieve competitive advantage,” said Brian Cotton of Frost & Sullivan.

As Jaclyn Kostner, PhD, best selling author and expert on high-performance virtual collaboration, sums up: “As a general rule, global companies that collaborate better, perform better. Those that collaborate less, do not perform as well. It's just that simple.”

Panel:Technologies that let you work anywhere

BT Openzone – provides high-speed internet access at thousands of BT Openzone hotspots across the UK and Ireland and through partner networks around the world.

BT Datazone – lets you work flexibly with your laptop by giving you access to BT Openzone, BT Mobile 3G high-speed network and the GPRS network.

BT Fusion – provides the convenience of a single number that can be used in and out of the office on the same mobile handset. When within the range of the BT Business hub at work, you can make UK calls via the internet at landline rates. When you are out and about, it works as a standard mobile.

BT Teleworker – helps employees stay in touch with co-workers and customers while they are working at different sites.

BT Conferencing – offers a range of services to allow people participate in meetings with colleagues, customers and suppliers without travelling.

BT Business Email – allows you to take your inbox with you and access emails, contacts and a calendar. All you need to retrieve your mailbox online is a laptop or PDA and an internet connection.

MobileXpress from BT - is a managed service that gives you remote access to your corporate network and the internet, which means you don't even have to be in the office to conference. This allows users to connect to their corporate network simply and quickly with just a single click, whether they are travelling, teleworking or roaming across one of 19,000 Wi-Fi Hot Spots. Once connected, users have secure, reliable and cost effective access to corporate information at any time across 170 countries.